The Worst Job Interview…ever

I like to view Fridays as an opportunity to go a bit off topic.

I want to talk about something that everyone need to go through at some point in their life, especially the newly graduated.

The Job Interview. 

Instead of compiling a list of DOs and DON’Ts, I thought I would sum everything up in a tidy package that I like to call: The Worst Job Interview Ever. 

It was my final year of university and I saw a listing that a national journal with a locally based office was hiring interns. It was environmentally based. I knew nothing about the environment. I shrugged and figured – why not?

Don’t #1 – You should probably have a strong reason for applying for a job. 

I applied and miraculously GOT the interview. I spent a few minutes before the interview on the computers in the student lounge reading about the organization.

Don’t #2 – Always arrive at the job interview well researched. 

I was early (DO) and waited to meet the managers. A lovely man and woman met me and sat me down in the environmental student lounge and informed me I was interviewing for a completely different offshoot of the organization.

The woman began describing the organization, paused, and requested I proceed instead.

I had NOTHING. I knew absolutely nothing about what she was talking about. I had two options:

1. Tell her I didn’t know.
2. Make something up.

Now, a normal, level headed, respectable human being would go with option 1, but I, being a well versed English major (learned in the art of BS), launched into a spiralling manifesto of what I THOUGHT the organization was.

She looked at me.

 

“That’s not what we are at all.” 

I quickly tried to recover my footing, but the rest of the interview was by and large a disaster.

And it gets worse. 

I got the job. (Which isn’t the bad part).

I didn’t hear about a starting date and didn’t inquire further. One day, I got a politely hostile email asking where in the name of Mary WAS I?

So, not only did I bomb the job interview, but then I got the job and then didn’t check in further for a start date.

 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the foundation of my full-time career.

I have since become friends with the man and woman who interviewed me that day – they are still my bosses, but I can speak up at business meetings and cat sit and go out to eat with them and laugh about that day. Sort of.

This past week, my manager told me that it was the fact that I tried to bore through an impossible situation was the reason I was hired. So the thing that would have gotten me chucked to the very bottom of the consideration pile was the thing that helped me be where I am, which is selling advertising and creating partnerships at a Journal that I love, with people I respect and have a lot of fun with.

 

May your future job interviews be more polished and professional than mine.

What is your worst job interview moment?